In the context of the development of broadband mobile infrastructure, in particular 4G (fourth generation) networks and high data rate radio enterprise networks, the installation of pico cell gets more and more important. A pico cell is a part of a cellular network providing a high bit rate and having a typical radius of 50-100 m. Per square kilometer, up to several hundreds of radio access point can be installed. This leads to the first concentration layer, i.e. the first or physical layer at a node of the network to require a high number of links.
On the one hand, the usage of leased lines as in 2G (second generation) or 3G (third generation) networks is expensive, especially if the bit rate per access point is high. On the other hand, the revenue per user will almost be constant in 4G networks, as compared to 2G/3G networks. Thus, the part of revenue dedicated to transport should not significantly increase.
The transport solutions providing high data rate in place are ATM (asynchronous transport mode), SDH (synchronous digital hierarchy), Ethernet etc. But currently, transport is usually not optimized in the design of radio access networks. Normally, a specific protocol is installed with the transport equipment. In case of pico cells, this approach makes it necessary to install a protocol based transport inside the radio access points. Such a radio access point is quite complex, having physical and MAC layers as well as management layers and the transport protocol. For examples, such radio access points have been implemented in WiFi solutions, where “light” and “heavy” radio access points exist according to the radio management capabilities. The transport solution in this specific case is Ethernet.
The outlined approach is quite complex and in consequence quite costly. It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a transport method with reduced complexity.